


Our Lady of Ways, Our Lady of Means

by clutzycricket



Series: we play the game they fix [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Alternate Universe - Prohibition Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-08
Updated: 2016-03-08
Packaged: 2018-05-25 10:56:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6192271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clutzycricket/pseuds/clutzycricket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From a lost daughter of a great house to a drifting mechanic and part-time singer to the dread Balerion, Rhaenys Targaryen was a study in keeping her ears open and her words well chosen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Lady of Ways, Our Lady of Means

The War is ending in trickles and tatters, and twenty-four-year-old Rhaenys Targaryen- (no, no, no, that can’t be your name, Dyanna Sand, keep them  _safe_ )- works down near the edges of Flea Bottom, listening at the bar to the rumors.

“Dya, you here about the Sparrow who is making himself High Septon?” Bella asks, rolling her blue eyes. The girl is built like a fortress, all easy curves and a haymaker that knocked out rowdy Redcloaks like they were nothing, for all she preferred her smiles and the promise of some extra coin. 

“You would have thought that someone would have remembered what happened last time the Faith was armed,” Dyanna Sand says, lightly enough to hide her feelings. She sticks pretty close to the truth for those who asked, like Bella, who was a Baratheon bastard through and through- a half-Dornish girl whose father cut out, and who lost her mother in the Sack. “And from what I hear, it could be bad for business.”

Bella shrugs and looked at the singer, “All those soldier boys coming back? They can’t do much against them.”

Dya looks at the bartender, who leaned on a cane too heavily to have been drafted and who had fought for the royalists in the last war. He looks tired, beaten down, and the scars on her shoulder where metal, magic, and flesh meet itch like a prophecy.

The men who are left come back, and Dyanna Sand repairs the shitty bits and bobs they get from the maesters.

Then the High Sparrow starts his own little war. Against magic, but no one listens, because you need magic to power the actually useful replacement arms and legs, not to mention the lungs and hearts the merchant boys got. No magic means no one down at the docks, means loosing sons in slow creeping failures and not being able to bury them with the help of the Silent Sisters.

Against women working, which makes the poor women turn against the High Sparrow in a quiet sort of way, preferring the usual faith of Oldtown and the rituals and prayers in their own shitty homes in Flea Bottom. There are always going to be mouths to feed, after all, and too many of them lost someone to be able to be a "bastion of faith in the home".

Against alcohol, which is where Dyanna starts to fade, and Balerion hires vets and those that are forgotten by the regime.

She has more money at this point, and money buys influence, especially through the imposing men loyal to her.

Balerion, Dyanna… she clips, clips, clips in her low Braavosi heels, scared little Rhaenys Targaryen rattling behind her masks as she organizes Chataya, Mott, and a few other small organizations to slide around the Lannisters and Baelish.

She keeps herself at a distance, reminds herself of the screams that she still hears at night, and that even as war-weary as the world is, Tywin Lannister would still send men straight to the Martell strongholds if he knew she lived. He never was a man to leave a job unfinished, and that one was something that could turn upon him like a snake.

(The night Bella tells her about the boy calling himself Aegon Targaryen landing in the Stormlands, bringing ‘flu with him, she takes a bottle of Dornish red upstairs and drinks until she blacks out.)

~

Dyanna Sand is twenty-six, and Balerion is establishing Oldstones, when Joffrey Baratheon is to be married to Margaery Tyrell. 

And the Red Viper walks straight into Oldstones, and she nearly breaks the glass she's holding in her bronze hand. 

He saunters over to the counter, where she is discussing the drink menu and set list with the barkeep, flashing them both a practiced flirt’s smile.

She gives him a sickly look back. 

“I’m looking for the owner of this establishment,” he says, looking around curiously. Oldstones was a silk merchant’s manse at one point, and she kept it clean and nice for the customers. (It also let her play with security, but not too many knew that.)

“I can schedule an appointment with one of the managers,” she gets out, wondering if he would actually _look_ at her. 

He does, because his eyes go very wide at their shared widow’s peak and dark eyes with too-long lashes, the quirked eyebrows and sharp faces. 

And that is how Balerion gets the first of the Great Houses to work with her, with shouts of recrimination mixed in with joy over having Elia’s girl back.

He helps her meet with the Tyrells through his friend Willas, Mace Tyrell’s eldest boy. He’d ruined his knee, keeping him out of the fighting, but he was the brains of his generation, and apparently protective of his sister.

The Tyrells had the wine-making Redwynes for cousins on one side, and the Hightowers of orthodox Oldtown. With the rumors of Lannister instability, it wasn’t too hard to convince them to work with her.

~

He comes into a club she’s performing at- she doesn’t need to perform, or do repair work, but Dyanna Sand isn’t to be linked too closely with Balerion. So she’s not at Oldstones when someone on some bad moonshine and a cheap Littlefucker pistol starts waving it around, and the dark woman with the shimmering silver dress on stage is a damn good target.

She gets ready to cast a misdirection spell, hoping it doesn’t go too badly, when he crumples and she looks into storm eyes and a quirked grin.

Then she notices the blood, and has one of the boys take him in an outfit car to her place for a sawbones to patch up.

“You sure?” Tom asks. His leg is running mostly on her work these days, and he was one of the first gunrunners she’d brought in. He was holding up the pistol like it was something scraped from his shoe. “I’m amazed this thing hasn’t blown his hand off yet. Cheap little… beg pardons.”

She smiles up at him, and puts a hand on her hip. “The man did just save me. He deserves better than to rest in Rosie’s shit rooms, and you know it.” Rosie’s rooms were little more than places to fuck or have some of the good stuff, everyone knew, and she kept a good mage on staff in case of anyone who overindulged, but the housekeeping was sloppy.

He’s laid out on her couch when she kicks off her heels and sends her dress clattering to the floor, eyes opening as she pulls a silk robe around herself.

“I’m Dyanna, by the way,” she offers, make-up still on and knowing that the robe flattered her like a Lyseni painting. “Who are you, hero boy?”

“Sirius Black,” he answers, watching her warily. Something about it made a wicked little grin curve up her face.

Sirius stays, because she was his best chance of getting home or because she offered him a roof or because whatever demons drove him left him a little cracked she wasn’t sure.

But he fought like a demon and danced like a dream and used his mouth on her body like it was his own form of prayer, so even when she was preparing for him to find a way home, she was still glad she had the time she did. No one had looked at her like that- sleepy, trusting, and wanting only what they saw, scars and all, a whispered “c’mon, Dya,” as he pulled her closer and not wanting her to be something she couldn’t be anymore.

~

When Chat told her that final, damning piece of evidence- a pissy patron who let it slip and her daughter’s quick thinking with some potions clouding his memories- Balerion settles down with Sirius in her office and pulled out all of her evidence, wondering what to do.

“A clean kill would be best,” she says, rubbing her nose. “Bywater wouldn’t be able to solve it- he doesn’t have the manpower, and not many people would want Baelish’s death solved. The Tyrells have the Lannisters on the ropes, and with Kevan dead and Cersei…”

She pauses. There were some things that even vengeful souls couldn’t stomach, and Dyanna had always been more practical than vengeful.

“She’s gone, now, as well, so that leaves a few scattered souls fighting over scraps,” she says, instead. “The Vale powers are so busy fighting each other that removing Baelish might actually let me make a move there… Gulltown is getting dangerous in its irresponsibility.”

There had been doctored booze a time or two, though only once to one of Balerion’s joints. They’d made sure of that.

There was only one detail caught in her head, a tall, dark-haired woman who had a hunted air that was all too familiar.

“I’ll have Trys flip Alayne Stone for us,” Dyanna says, thoughtfully. “Get the poor girl out before any of this happens.”

Occasionally, even a dragon could show mercy.


End file.
